Hidden History of Civil War Savannah

Published by The History Press

Charleston, SC

www.historypress.net

Copyright © 2017 by Michael L. Jordan

All rights reserved

Front cover, top left: Library of Congress; top center: bequest of Robert E. Lee , III, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia; top right: author’s collection; bottom: estate of Judy L. Wood.

First published 2017

e-book edition 2017

ISBN 978.1.62585.180.2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016961744

print edition ISBN 978.1.62619.643.8

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

To my parents, Marjorie and Morris

CONTENTS

Foreword, by Jim Morekis

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Savannah: More than Just a City That Sherman Didn’t Burn

1. What’s It Really All About? Alexander Stephens and His Corner-stone Speech in Savannah, March 1861

2. Francis S. Bartow: Savannah’s Confederate Martyr

3. Not Yet a Hero: Robert E. Lee’s Savannah Sojourns

4. CSS Atlanta: Savannah’s Iron Monster

5. Prisoners by the Park: Savannah’s First Yankee Tourists

6. The Big Skedaddle: The Confederate Evacuation of Savannah, December 1864

7. After the Fall: Savannah Rejoins the Union

8. Who Says Sherman Didn’t Burn Savannah? The Great Fire of January 1865

9. Silence and the Sentinel: Savannah’s Confederate Memory

Notes

Selected Bibliography

About the Author

FOREWORD

It seems that no matter what else might change in America, our collective fascination with the Civil War remains unbroken.

Whether because the country still wrestles with so many of its ancillary issues today, or because of its stirring and very human tales of courage, or because of the way Americans reconciled after our bloodiest conflict—or because of all three—the events of 1861–65 resonate with us a century and a half after the war’s end.

While Savannah, Georgia, is very much in touch with its colonial and Revolutionary War past, the Civil War left its mark here as well—not in fire and ember, as in Atlanta or in Columbia, South Carolina, but in affirming Savannah’s identity as a bit more individualistic, a bit truer to itself, a bit off the beaten path, even for Southern cities.

Michael Jordan’s new book, Hidden History of Civil War Savannah, delivers more than the promise of its title. In my years of familiarity with his passion for history and dedication to scholarship, I’ve also learned that Michael has one of the rarest of scholarly gifts: he communicates that passion for history with skill, humor, confidence and real accessibility.

Whether in his written projects or in his many fine independent video productions—which have set the regional standard—Michael has always reached for more than the mundane.

Even a glance at the chapter titles of Hidden History shows that this is no regurgitation of things you already know. You’ll find tales of soldierly bravery, for sure. But you’ll also read about the largely forgotten, controversial Corner-stone Speech, delivered in Savannah by Alexander Stephens, which made stark the South’s morally indefensible reason for secession.

You’ll also read lesser-known facts about very well-known people, such as the young Robert E. Lee. As a U.S. Army officer, he helped build the same Fort Pulaski that would be one of the Union’s earliest prizes of war when it was recaptured from its Confederate garrison.

Savannah has its share of tour guides. I’m chagrined to say that some of them are, shall we say, occasionally tempted to embellish the truth a bit.

Like myself, Michael has a journalism background. He knows the value of accuracy, of authenticity, of first-person experience. Hidden History of Civil War Savannah exemplifies all three.

I’ve written several travel guidebooks, and as I write them, I always keep Michael’s example in mind: take care of the truth, and the fun will follow.

The old line goes that truth is stranger than fiction. As any journalist, historian and history buff knows, however, truth is also usually much more interesting than fiction.

There’s no need to embellish a history as grand and intriguing as Savannah’s, anyway.

JIM MOREKIS

Author and editor-in-chief of Connect Savannah magazine

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The genesis of this book was a January 2013 conversation with eminent Savannah educator and historian Dr. Paul M. Pressly, who convinced me that I had the knowledge and skill to write in depth about Savannah’s history. Hugh Golson, descendant of so many noteworthy Savannahians of long ago and keeper of countless stories, read virtually everything I wrote and offered insight at every turn. Hugh also shared his extensive and ever-growing personal collection of period images of Savannah. The incomparable Dr. Maurice Mel Melton, author of The Best Station of Them All: The Savannah Squadron, 1861–1865, kept me straightened out during my feeble attempt to dabble in his waters of Civil War naval history when I wrote about the ill-fated CSS Atlanta. Lieutenant Colonel Henry W. Persons Jr. and National Park Service historian Jim Burgess of Manassas National Battlefield Park were immeasurably helpful as I wrote about Francis S. Bartow and the Oglethorpe Light Infantry at the Battle of First Manassas.

Mazie Bowen, public service coordinator at the University of Georgia’s Special Collections Library, was always available with a quick scan of a source document or an image. The archivists at the Georgia Historical Society’s Research Center, the Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University were instrumental as well. The folks at Washington & Lee University bent over backward to help me obtain a portrait of young U.S. Army lieutenant Robert E. Lee in time to meet my deadline. Luciana Spracher, director of the City of Savannah Research Library and Municipal Archives, was as much a partner in this project as she has been in so many of my historical documentaries over the years.

Jeff Seymour, director of education and history at the National Civil War Naval Museum in Columbus, Georgia, was tremendously helpful with access to typescripts of period diaries. Reference librarian Sharen Lee at the Bull Street Library in Savannah continued her tradition of going out of her way to help me find what I needed. Kelly Westfield, a graduate student in public history at my alma mater, Armstrong State University in Savannah, rendered invaluable service locating and copying historic newspaper articles and primary sources at libraries and archives in Savannah.

Mick McCay ran around downtown Savannah in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew to get me the correct punctuation for the text on the Confederate Monument. Fenton Martin and Dr. Christopher Hendricks helped me clean up and correctly organize more than four hundred endnotes and my bibliography.

My mother-in-law, Margarete Neate, worked as a full-time child-care provider for a month to enable me to write the first few chapters of this work. My wife (and published author), Dr. Krista Wiegand, graciously shouldered many of my usual tasks and responsibilities so that I could devote the time and energy required to finish the book. She offered wise counsel, endured my long-winded stories and tempered my perfectionism. I could ask for no greater partner or friend. Finally, this project has spanned more than half the life of my son Joseph, who has found his own unique and endearing ways to support his daddy’s book.

Introduction

SAVANNAH

More than Just a City That Sherman Didn’t Burn

Walk down one of Savannah’s tree-shaded downtown streets on any given day and you’re likely to hear the voice of a tour guide wafting on the breeze behind a passing trolley or echoing off the thick trunks of the live oak trees and the brick walls of the historic houses. General William T. Sherman’s ‘March to the Sea’ ended here in Savannah in December 1864. The guide will inform his or her guests—correctly—that Savannah mayor Richard Arnold and a small group of aldermen rode out to meet Sherman’s advancing army outside the city limits in order to surrender the defenseless city, that Sherman lodged in the stately Green-Meldrim House on Madison Square and proceeded, in a telegram, to present Savannah to President Abraham Lincoln as a Christmas gift, complete with thousands of bales of cotton.

While the story is true, and truly fascinating, it barely scratches the surface of this historic city’s rich and fascinating experience in the American Civil War. Here, in Savannah, the Confederacy’s vice president declared to the world that slavery was the corner-stone of the new Southern republic. Here a brash politician-turned-soldier defied Georgia’s governor and marched off to die, alongside six of his young troops, in the first battle of the war. On a meandering saltwater creek just outside town, a menacing iron monster steamed out to do battle with two of the North’s most fearsome ironclad warships. Savannah was twice the temporary home of the South’s most famous general, Robert E. Lee, who presided over the redesign of the area’s coastal fortifications before he assumed command in Virginia and became a legend. Here, on the edge of a sprawling, green park where thousands of locals and tourists enjoy concerts, picnics and farmer’s markets, more than five thousand pitiful Union prisoners were once packed into a rough wooden stockade. In the days before an imposing steel and concrete span first conveyed motorists from Savannah to South Carolina, ten thousand bedraggled Confederate soldiers made the crossing on a temporary floating bridge cobbled together from rickety wooden barges. Incredibly, just days after Sherman captured Savannah, a majority of the city’s leading citizens voted not just to surrender, but to rejoin the Union, turning their backs on their sons and husbands fighting in Confederate armies on other battlefields. Here, weeks after Savannah’s war ended, the city did burn in a spectacular, explosive fire, with some loss of life and great damage to property. And now, more than a century and a half after these events took place, a bronze statue of a Confederate soldier stands sentinel over the scene, while a marble figure titled Silence lifts a finger to her lips as she surveys the graves of more than seven hundred Confederate soldiers.

Truly, Savannah is a Civil War city, an epicenter of activity in the conflict that southerners like to call the War Between the States. Far from being just a place that Sherman chose not to burn or, in the words of the great local historian Alexander Lawrence, A Present for Mr. Lincoln, Savannah is a gift for anyone who loves a good story about our nation’s past.

1

WHAT’S IT REALLY ALL ABOUT?

Alexander Stephens and His Corner-stone Speech in

Savannah, March 1861

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.

—Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens in Savannah, March 21, 1861

Today, tourists stroll through Savannah’s Chippewa Square blissfully unaware of its noteworthy association with one of the South’s darkest Civil War secrets. Many disobey warning signs and step onto the brick base of Daniel Chester French’s 1910 statue of Georgia founder James Oglethorpe. Others amble about beneath the shade of the spreading live oak trees, searching for the bench where Tom Hanks’s character in the 1994 movie Forrest Gump famously intoned, Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.

Some may be aware that Forrest Gump’s namesake was Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, leader of the Ku Klux Klan. It’s less likely that anyone save a few history-minded locals will remember that the two busts of Confederate generals currently located in the center of Savannah’s Forsyth Park once stood here in the center of the square, before they were moved to make way for Oglethorpe. But these are mere hints of the true secret in question. It is hidden in the history of the Art Moderne theater perched on the northeast trust lot on the eastern edge of the square. (Trust lots are large parcels situated, two per side, on the eastern and western sides of each of Savannah’s twenty-two historic downtown squares. Part of James Oglethorpe’s unique city design, trust lots are typically set aside for large public buildings or mansions).

The Savannah Theatre as it appeared in the nineteenth century. Georgia Historical Society.

This building, the Savannah Theatre, is in some senses one of the oldest structures in the city. British architect William Jay, who is also responsible for such Savannah landmarks as the Owens-Thomas House on Oglethorpe Square, the Telfair mansion (now the Telfair Academy of Art) on Telfair Square and the Scarborough mansion on West Broad Street (now the Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum), designed the first theater building here in 1818. Jay’s structure burned down in 1906, and the rebuilt structure was charred again in 1948, though portions of the original north and east walls remain, concealed beneath the modern stucco. Today’s iteration features an exuberantly flashing neon Savannah sign, a cylindrical glass ticket booth and a wide marquee. The exterior stairs climbing up the south face of the structure—a holdover from days when black theatergoers were required to use a separate entrance—usually go unnoticed, though they are a legacy of the racial bias that was once preached on this very spot by a leading Confederate politician.¹

On the evening of Thursday, March 21, 1861, the dusty square outside the theater, which was then called the Athenaeum, was thronged with people from all over Georgia. The state secession convention was meeting in the city—not to officially bring Georgia out of the Union, which had been accomplished two months earlier during a previous session in the state capital of Milledgeville—but rather to ratify the national Constitution of the Confederate States of America and fashion a new state constitution to reflect its principles. Because of this gathering, the city was full of important visitors.² Local newspapers had advertised that one of the new republic’s leading voices, Alexander Stephens, the provisional vice president of the Confederacy, would give a public address at the Athenaeum. In an age before television, radio or movies, and in a time when political change was gripping people of all classes, Stephens’s appearance was the biggest draw of the season.

Stephens was scheduled to begin speaking at 7:30 p.m., but the Athenaeum was standing room–only long before the appointed hour. The crowd in the building could not have numbered less than two thousand, proclaimed the Savannah Republican of March 22, 1861, for every square foot of it was packed, from pit to dome. The